Most Popular Books by David Adams

"Canada will NEVER be a safe haven for zombies. EVER." - John Baird, Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, 2013 There are so many things worse than death. Let's explore some, shall we? As inevitable as birth, death is just another part of life. No more malicious than the sunset at the end of a day. It isn't some evil bogeyman that preys upon innocent mortals who would otherwise live forever. All good things must come to an end. But what if they don't? What is life continued as a rotten parody of its previous existence, left to jerk and move, their mind a driver unable to drive stick? Dive into this confused mish-mash of stories set in Hugh Howey's world of I, Zombie. Enjoy the comedic, the horrific, the stupid and the insightful. Still not fit for human consumption.

Set within a wider British and international context of post-war reconstruction, The Everyday Experiences of Reconstruction and Regeneration focuses on such debates and experiences in Birmingham and Coventry as they recovered from Second World War bombings and post-war industrial collapse. Including numerous images, Adams and Larkham explore the initial development of the post-Second World War reconstruction projects, which so substantially changed the face of the cities and provided radical new identities. Exploring these cities throughout the post-war period brings into sharp focus the duality of contemporary approaches to regeneration, which often criticise mid-twentieth century ’poorly-conceived’ planning and architectural projects for producing inhuman and unsympathetic schemes, while proposing exactly the type of large-scale regeneration that may potentially create similar issues in the future. This book would be beneficial for academics and students of planning and urban design, particularly those with an interest in post-catastrophe or large-scale reconstruction projects within cities.

Highly charged and profoundly important, Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul is a new masterpiece from one of Canada’s greatest writers. On a bright morning in June 1985, a young Micmac man starts his first day of work—but by noon he is dead, killed mysteriously in the fourth hold of the cargo ship Lutheran. Hector Penniac had been planning to go to university, perhaps to study medicine. Roger Savage, a loner who has had to make his own way since his youth, comes under suspicion of killing Hector over a union card and a morning’s work. Even if he can’t quite put it into words, Roger immediately sees the ways in which Hector’s death will be viewed as symbolic, as more than an isolated tragedy—and that he is caught in a chain of events that will become more explosive with each passing day. The aging chief of Hector’s band, Amos Paul, tries to reduce the tensions raised by the investigation into Hector’s death and its connection to a host of other simmering issues, from territorial lines to fishing rights. His approach leads him into conflict with Isaac Snow, a younger and more dynamic man whom many in the band would prefer to lead them—especially when the case attracts press attention in the form of an ambitious journalist named Max Doran, the first of many outsiders to bring his own agenda and motives onto the Micmac reserve. Joel Ginnish, Isaac’s volatile and sometimes violent friend, decides to bring justice to Roger Savage when the authorities refuse to, blockading the reserve in order to do so. And though perhaps no one really means for it to happen, soon a single incident grows ineluctably into a crisis that engulfs a whole society, a whole province and in some ways a whole country. Twenty years later, RCMP officer Markus Paul—Chief Amos Paul’s grandson, who was fifteen years old when Hector was killed—tries to piece together the clues surrounding Hector Penniac’s death. The decades have passed, and much about the case has been twisted beyond recognition by the many ways that different people have sought to exploit it. But, haunted by the past, Markus still struggles towards a truth that will snap “those chains that had once seemed impossible to break.” (290) This is a novel that begins with an instant from today’s headlines, and digs down into the marrow to explore the oldest themes we know: murder and betrayal, race and history, the brutal and chaotic forces that guide the groups we are drawn into. Nothing is one-sided in David Adams Richards’ world—even the most scheming characters have moments of grace, while the most benevolent are shown to have selfish motives, or the need to show off their goodness. All are depicted with an almost Biblical gravity, framed by an understated genius of storytelling that makes this novel at once both an utterly gripping mystery, and a vitally important document of Canada’s broken past and divided present.

The Terris are engaging people, but they are a family in collapse. Alcoholism, drugs, and loveless sex have reduced them to a petty and wasted bunch. Worse, they typify aspects of the larger community besieged by financial woes and by creeping economic and cultural Americanization. What David Adams Richards accomplishes is no mean feat: his characters are at times vicious, sleazy, and even outright dim, yet he manages to entitle them to the interest and sympathy of the reader. Even more now than at its first publication in 1981, Lives of Short Duration’s sharp, essential insights have significance for readers seeking to understand the modern Canadian predicament.

A Governor General's Literary Award winner for non-fiction, Lines on the Water is a beautifully rendered portrait of a life spent fishing in the Miramichi River by acclaimed author David Adams Richards. In Lines on the Water, David Adams Richards writes eloquently and movingly about his life on the shores of one of the world's great fishing rivers. With the same insight and emotion that have won him praise for his fiction, Richards brings to life a community centred on fly-fishing—a sport that has become, for many, a way of life. Weaving together tales of the guides and poachers, the "sports" and the city slickers, Richards pays tribute to all who have shared in the joy of fishing the Miramichi. This is a book about our relationship with nature, about hunters and fishermen, friendship and family, history and memory. Lines on the Water teems with lore and wisdom, humour, and most of all, passion.

This illuminating portrait of the life and times of black artist Beauford Delaney evokes the vibrant milieu of Bohemian Greenwich Village in the 1930s and 1940s and Paris in the '50s and '60s. As it explores the evolution of Delaney's art, "Amazing Grace" examines the artist's relationships with such notables as Henry Miller, James Baldwin, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Alfred Stieglitz. 24 color plates.

The first definitive overview of the Tonalist movement-the crucial but long-misunderstood missing link in the evolution of American art. Includes over 300 color plates.

Exchanging Western values for far-off Thailand, Gunnar Ray plans to teach in the countryside and absorb the country's ancient wisdom. When monsoon rains flood the lands above his adopted village, catastrophe strikes. Gunnar's innocence is swept downstream along with hundreds of Thai lives. Exchanging Western values for far-off Thailand, Gunnar Ray plans to teach in the countryside and absorb the country's ancient wisdom. When monsoon rains flood the lands above his adopted village, catastrophe strikes. Gunnar's innocence is swept downstream along with hundreds of Thai lives.

The "Future Chronicles" has grown, from a single collection of robot stories, into a series whose unique take on major science fiction and fantasy themes - A.I., aliens, time travel, dragons, telepaths, zombies, immortality, galactic battles, cyborgs, doomsday - has made it one of the most acclaimed short story anthology series of the digital era. Its companion series - "Alt.Chronicles, The Illustrated Chronicles" and "Chronicle Worlds" - are similarly ground-breaking in their coverage of less mainstream tropes such as alternative history and shared universes. Created by award-winning author Samuel Peralta, and edited by some of the most-respected editors in the genre, each volume brings together work from visionary new voices and from the grandmasters of modern science fiction and fantasy. This "Future Chronicles - Special Edition" volume is a compendium of stories selected from the Chronicles' standalone titles, and includes five new stories, never before published, from some of today's best writers in speculative fiction.

A new novel by David Adams Richards is an important event. He's no longer the 23-year-old who wrote The Coming of Winter. Richards gains authority and poise with each new book. The dense, recurring rhythms of his prose perfectly match the dark, strong colours of his vision. In Richard's fiction poverty, hatred and despair become something quite different: transformed and transfigured by an extraordinary imagination, they acquire a meaning and beauty of their own.

The location of new housing development has become one of the most intractable controversies of modern times. This book provides a powerful critique of the growing tendency to reduce the debate on the development of new housing to a mere choice between greenfield and brownfield locations. It calls for full account to be taken of such factors as the structure and organisation of the housebuilding industry, supply and demand pressures in the housing market, the contested nature of sustainability and the political character of the planning process if a truly effective housing land policy is to be devised. Drawing on theories from economics and political science, this book will provide an important reference point on the institutional context within which residential development takes place and on the concerns of planning authorities, environmentalists, housebuilders, and their customers in relation to the apparent choice between greenfield and brownfield development.

This autobiographical memoir tells of the author's record-breaking win in Class 2 of the BOC Challenge, a solo round the world yacht race. Describes his long preparation for the race and the dramatic events that occurred during the voyage, including storms, ocean rescues, and technical emergencies. Includes a bibliography and a glossary.